( PVP- centric take)
I assume most of the changes are done regarding PvE and I generally cant be bothered by the changes of brutal slash or shred but just for the record shred is being nerfed by 12% for no reason at all, Reactive resin is completely removed and generally what really bothers me is how aimless and incompetent changes to feral are from BFA on.
So let me give you some pointers here and if you choose to improve on at least 1 of these points, I … We * shall be more than happy I believe:
feral has terrible self and offhealing compared to any other offhealing class on top of that you’re in an extra global cooldown because of shapeshifting. Regrowth puts you out of form, if that changes , ill let the last part of the sentence go.
(our frenzied regeneration went down from 33% for 3 secs to a mediocre 16% for 3 secs, and sometimes it feels good when you have Heart Of The Wild… sadly its 5 minute cooldown and a global cd too that doesnt even powershift you into bear form like it did before) also theres a nerf on Strength Of The Wild from SL.
feral has real bad time doing single target damage, we dont need no nerf on any single target ability even to an ability as useless as Shred. Our bite is nerfed by 25% in !PvP! and with the removal of the old (2) set bonus (6% dmg increase on bite) it becomes 31% Ferocious Bite dmg reduction) , Ferocious Wound (20% hp debuff nerfed to 15% then to 12% now currently is 10%) PvP talent has also been nerfed 2 times since BFA, and we got hard time reaching the talent Taste for Blood anyway ( 5% dmg increase on bite per bleed on target) also Ferocious Bite does actual damage only if you have above 50 energy and a talent called Frantic Momentum helps with that, now not only its hard to reach too but its also nerfed heavily.
we lost a lot of critical strike (10%) and bleed dmg (10%) of the OLD set bonus, 6% raw dmg on Ferocious Bite and we’re granted the same Berserk that we already have in practicality (you aint gonna sit still you still gonna be generating 1-2 combo points every 1 global cooldown anyway). New set bonus gives us between 1-5% agility which is great but still its still on a minus side of the things, so i read it as nerf.
Speaking of Berserk, its passive bleed dmg got nerfed by 25% and another nerf is that berserk will give you 10% LESS dmg on rake and 8% more dmg on Shred but since Shred is getting nerfed again in the next patch, compared to now that means… a nerf.
Speaking of Berserk again… lets speak of it … again… Why does Berserk require 3 talents to work like a proper 3 minute cooldown ?
Why are so many things NOT baseline… the restealth ability for example, cyclone, soothe, stampeding roar… LEADER OF THE PACK, THORNS?
Cyclone is still too expensive and hard to reach as a talent.
Mass Entanglement is a VERY much needed talent for ferals, but it not realistically reachable.
Wild Growth is as useless as it can get for Ferals. I personally dont even have it on my bars.
Incapacitating Roar should be on a separated node rather than with Bash.
Soothe should just be put out as an optional talent or removed for all I care this ability is a waste of talent pointsin PVP
Convoke requires me to spec into a haste talent 2 times and 1 extra time to make it actually viable to use (Frantic Momentum & Ashamanes Guidance), also why cant I have Incarnation AND Convoke?
We’re not gonna receive any immunity spells like the other melees Enha Shamans (Ethereal Form + Burrow , the new ability in 10.0.1) , Paladins (Divine Shield, BOP) , Demon hunters (Blur,Darkness,RFA,Netherwalk and even Glimse), Warrior (Die By The Sword, Bladestorm, Reflect, Berserker Rage) and we’re the backwards underdog class that has a design that wouldve been very welcome during the Wrath expansion, can we have Berserk to give immunity to Fear just like it did in Wrath ?
Our CC is mediocre and self- sabotaging and contradictory.
let exclude the rookie mistake of not being able to predict every interrupt (healers got one too now) and casting Cyclone and now you gonna shamefully use an extra global cooldown to go back into whatever silly furry form you were in before desperately needing to peel off your healer.
Opener Rake which is also our main sorce of damage and our strongest bleed happens to be our Stun opener, which is cringe, because Rake does 30% more dmg from stealth and sometimes you dont want to open with a Stun and put a weird DR for nothing on your target.
Entangling Roots do break too easily of our own rotation, Blizzard wants us to AOE everything, and yeah, that instant cast u got, you aint gonna use it for healing because your healing is nothing, yes, you gonna use it for a 1-2 seconds of root.
Same goes for Incapacitating Roar. Compared to the Paladin Incap, feral Incap breaks off 0,003 seconds in because … well your whole playstyle revolves around bleeding … everybody around you. Funny enough paladins can take 40% of your life in their Incap and then stun you but God forbid you can get some 2 seconds chill time as a Feral.
You know at this point Ill be happy if it removes my bleeds as well you know because all of these spells like Karma and Mindgames… they’re so anty-druid , you need an extra macro to remove your Well Honed instincts when you get Mindgames on… ah … bummer.
-all healing abilities (except frenzied regen) should be castable in cat/bear form or at least just cat form. We heal too little to be punshed an extra global to get back in form.
Feral is also supposed to cast while everyone including healers now have an interrupt ability, a cast that no matter if successful or not will punish you with 1 extra global cooldown to get back in Cat/Bear form. Convoke should be your most powerful burst, not only it does no damage but its not even castable in 99% of the scenarious.
I now see how it was a very competent decision to give fast, close to instant-cast Cyclone to Blance druids… lets ignore that historically it was a Feral trait, a very necessary trait.
Defensives are okayish, its just Bear Form is very clunky, one of the things is Ironfur requiring more than 10 Rage. By the time you get this extra armor you need is by the time you accumulate 20 Rage and by the time this happens- its too late and you gotta go back Cat Form anyway, so either reduce the Rage requirements for it or make the talent skippable.
I also really like having Brutal Slash in Bear Form, i just wish it didnt waste my stacks in Cat Form.
I started playing WW recently and holly molly mobility is so smooth and fluid compared to Feral even if you arguie Feral is a bit more mobile etc… but not having the annoying shifting GCD makes a biiiiig difference.
Regrowth still does nothing, this is the biggest issue, it does like 800hps on a 300k hp character, might as well just remove the ability entirely, complete waste of a gcd
Feral will literally never be good enough until our healing is buffed back, the entire class is based around bleeding and outlasting other people.
When arms warriors, demon hunters, and rogues heal for more than druids just delete the entire class, it has nothing to offer, i heal more on my WW with 1 heal on 15 second cooldown than on this class spamming Regrowth on proc
Suggested change:
Revert Frenzied Regen nerf
Buff Regrowth by 2x
Regrowth also casts Rejuv on proc if talented
Update:
10.1 PTR changes to Feral. Bring a new PvP talent and a change to Leader of the pack.
Wild Attunement (New) After successful Cyclone casts, you are automatically shifted into Cat Form and your next Ferocious Bite, Rip, or Maim within 5 sec also casts Feral Frenzy. PvP Talent. PvP Talent. Requires Druid. Requires level 10.
Leader of the Pack While in Cat Form, you increasemovement speed of raid members within 20 yards by 10%. Leader of the Pack also causes allies to heal themselves for 3% of their maximum health when they critically hit with a direct attack. The healing effect cannot occur more than once every 8 sec. PvP Talent. PvP Talent. Requires Druid. Requires level 10.
Again my opinion is they can at least make Cyclone castable in Cat form, to me these changes are more of a nerf, because I will not be playing Leader Of The Pack and even if i were i’d be -5% crit as its removed , we already move fast enough + the 3% healing is even less in arena and is insegnificent.
I really cant understand the santiment that rets can give 5% dmg to everyone almost permanently but we cannot have 5% crit but since they’re nerfing crit all around next patch i guess thats the logic behind it.
What I would prefer is if this change remains, nerf it to 5% movement speed and 3% healing and leave it BASELINE not taking a talent slot.
We’re also most likely will play Wild Slashes (Swipe & Thrash dmg increase by 20%) as the new talent Thrashing Claws added that basically adds 20% dmg on Shred and makes it add Thrash on your target, also Swipe does add Thrash too)
Which is amazing and TBF with the added changes to Berserk i think im pretty happy even tho we lost 10% Rake damage during Berserk window and 10% dmg on bleeds and 10% crit on them baseline because of the set bonus.
Even though we will see how things play out since loss of Brutal Slash will foce us into using more energy heavy abilities, but i feel like its gonna remain close to the same energy spent overall.
SO in all honesty , now things look alright-ish, wish we had CC besides our stuns or at least cyclone to be castable in forms and the low healing to be buffed a little.
I genuinely think casting Cyclone in bear form could be crazy cool now that i think about it
Well i think the primary problem with feral in PvP right now is just how the class is paper. In Legion, or SL for example, we could go toe to toe with people, carefully plan out our defensives and healing to match gos from other classes, and in a straight 1v1 most of the time we could outlast our opponent.
Ferals damage in DF is good, but the SECOND pressure is put on a feral druid it just falls over, Arms warriors heal more than ferals, Assassination rogues heal more than ferals, Destruction warlocks heal more than ferals, Survival hunters heal more than ferals, are we even a hybrid class anymore?
I dunno, damage feels fine to me, the problem is just i can’t really do much damage, because the second someone touches me i take 40% of my max hp in dmg and have to go full defensive mode and drop all the pressure
AOE pressure feels good with spamming PW but ST is mediocre at best and its hard to push for killa add it to bashis quite short and the time you are back to the kill target healer is free to heal again lol…
I really think you should inform yourself on the changes instead of commenting things that are going to change next patch just so we can save ourselves time and have a more straight-forward productive conversation:
stun duration will be 5 sec (maim, kidney…etc) while bash (4 secs) to all classes (mostly) , in other words most ccs are getting buffed.
Also you should always Maim offtarget in current patch as its 5 seconds and not bash 4 secs and save CD for charge in the current patch. This is just an advice.
Im responding to this comment because theres some truth to this. You lose a lot of your CCs by just tryin to go back in shapeshift or go back on your target.
Rogues got 2 shadowsteps, you can shadowstep stun off-target and go back on your main target with ther other one. I suppose we dont have 2 charges because we’re pretty mobile and I personally agree with this BUT we dont really have any ranged CC or ranged dmg and every melee does have that: Warrior has deadly throw or whatever its called , the ranged 3 sec stun, aoe fear and reflect can sometimes do something like that too, rogues got bonespike, poisoned knife and blind/sap, dh has imprison, stun, aoe stun, small aoe fear (bruh) , eye beam and throw glave, ret paladins got stun, aoe incap, and spam ranged dmg spell that i dont know the name of, rep, shamans are mostly hybrid ranged and melee + hex , stun totem being aoe…
Anyway back to the point:
Point is, for feral Cyclone is too demanding (it demands you to lose 10%~ dmg reduction in terms of talents, it has casting time and last but not least very short range + the fact that it kicks you out of form) and while we have cat moonfire and its great and i love it , i cannot spec it into the meta cleave build (the one i play in 70% of the games), again i dont care about Moonfire just calling it out because i know someone in the comments will mention it.
You start with a condescending and then just prove my point? lol
Why would we talk about a future patch where things are not finalized at all and can change at any moment? Makes no sense.
Currently with the cc reduction gear and bash being 4 secs many times its just not worth it or a it has a minimal effect to charge to a healer who is standing far away to CC him and by the time you reach your kill target the CC is almost over. Feral is mobile yes and so all other specs right now maybe not DK, but Feral mobility relative to everything else diminished a lot… Rogue has almost the same run speed as Feral + the other speed enchants etc while having 2 shadowsteps…
Still the biggest point is that Feral does not have the big ST kill potential… Warrior with big MS can and will eventually wear down the target even without crossing CC others have big burst windows whereis Feral really only shines vs pet specs but it lost some CC.
This xpac Feral cant kill anything on its own like last xpac unless you have idiots packet together.
Today in SS an Arms did more healing than a Feral of course without having to use CPs abd waste stupid GCDs clickig Regrowth every few seconds and without having to go bear form and losing all dps… all the while also having more deadly dots with the bleeds build… not to mention having big juicy Mortal Strike and insane burst every minute or so and also having respectable mobility. Why even think of playing Feral? Every xpac we lose something while everyone else gets new interesting stuff??? our mobility relative to others is no longer that great almost every spec got more mobility + speed enchants means a freaking DK runs faster than Usain Bolt??? our bleeds are no longer that critical and we lost our ST threat for some padded aoe dmg that does not help closing games? Bash being 4 secs reduced even more by the cc reduction gear? you cc the healer and he is free even before you reach your kill target again.
Convoke of the spirits unnerfed: It no longer sends 4 combo points Ferocious Bites but 5 combo point Ferocious Bites.
(4) set bonus proc gives 1 combo points every 2 seconds instead of every 1.5 seconds but lasts 2 seconds longer (instead of 6 , it lasts 8 seconds).
reminding that Ferocious Bite is nerfed by 25% and since old set bonus (6% bite dmg increase) falls behind, this becomes 31%, so convoke wont do that much different.
Also its not a PvE thread but i will allow myself to bring some PvE into the conversation.
I did some testing and it seems my damage as feral druid with the new set bonuses and found out on single vs 3 AOE targets i do less damage:
8% on single and 12% on AOE.
Newest 10.1 update dropped, regrowth healing for feral buffed by 50%!!!*
*not in PvP
Cool, every other spec, Shamans, Paladins, Priests etc got between 20-50% increase on all their self healing, but Feral? Nah this spec can burn, you will heal for 5% of your max hp with one global spent every time and you will be happy
Frenzied regen healing for 10% max hp every 90 seconds? Sounds fair :))))
I mean it’s just a big middle finger at this point, they buff all self healing across the board by a lot for all the other hybrids, AND they buff Regrowth by 50% which was way overdue…
AAAAND then they literally disable the buff in PvP when regrowth is already basically a wasted global after the first 30 seconds of an arena game.
Why do this? Why? I don’t get it. Yeah it’s going to be amazing next patch when everyone has 600k hp and regrowth still heals for 30k with a crit, and applies a HoT doing 700 health per second
Look, we’re all frustrated, we all love kitties and I do AGREE with you that nobody should get 50% healing increase before us (not because we’re so self important but because our healing costs so much: more global cooldowns, lower in numbers and generally harder to pull off) but lets not overexhadurate and lets not misinform:
Frenzied Regeneration does not heal 10% of your total health ,it heals 16 % of your total health in PvP and its cooldown is affected by Haste so its roughly 33~ seconds cooldown for most druids, during Heart Of The Wild you 20% more health in bear form and that increases its healing and ALSO you get a second charge, you can also increase its healing with Adaptive Swarm and Barkskin and if you have a HP boost trinket, you can also pop.
Now, do I agree and think that its absurd for Heart Of The Wild to be 5 min cd, of course NOT
Do I think that Adaptive Swarm should have a 2nd charge- yes.
Do I like that in case I want proper healing from Frenzied Regeneration I have to use Barkskin and Adaptive Swarm. Absolutely Not.
Thats 3 global cooldowns and 3 more seconds in being useless in Bear Form which equals to 6 seconds of you doing NOTHING.
My thoughts on changes that can improove on these problems:
I do think that Enraged Regeneration is too weak and should either be buffed, or Cyclone should be castable in all forms , including Bear Form, OR Bear Form should have some way to refresh Cat Bleeds or do more damage or be able to kyte and not be stuck in it, as I said earlier Bear Form has only 1 powershifter and that is Stampeding Roar, so thats a bummer, mayeb if Enraged Regeneration was a powershift as well that would make it a lot better by its own.
Regrowth healing sucks, them increasing the storage of healing of Protector of the grove from 240% to 400% to now to 425% does very close to nothing, because the damage that you store is only 5%, which in reality means you have to deal around 400k damage in order to fill it up to the 425% (42k stored healing) buff.
Which renders this pretty situational and against the philosophy of them wanting feral to be more of a single target spec, for to fill this stored healing you have to be in a AOE scenario.
Ill use this response to showcase
Update 3:
Nerfs:
Tear Open Wounds’ damage conversion rate reduced to 60% (was 70%).
Thrashing Claws’ Shred damage bonus reduced to 5% (was 8%).
This is more like 1% nerf only because Shred is getting buffed by 2% ,read more
bellow.
Buffs:
Regrowth healing increased by 50%. ONLY IN PVE, NOT IN PVP.
Swiftmend healing increased by 50%.
Rejuvenation healing increased by 25%.
Wild Growth healing increased by 25%.
Protector of the Pack’s maximum heal value increased by 25%.
Increase Shred, Rake, Swipe, Brutal Slash, and Thrash damage by 2%.
I just think it’s such an absurd change, every other hybrid, shamans had their healing buffed across the board (including their maelstrom proc heal), paladins had their healing buffed (WoG 50%), Windwalkers had their healing buffed by 25% across the board, Priest had both dot heals and renew buffed
And for this hybrid spec, the ONLY heal we can press in our rotation, naturally, since we have to break all forms to cast rejuv, gets a 50% buff, that is then disabled in PvP
Why single out ferals? Why? No other hybrid spec across the board is treated like this, they all got blanket heal buffs
As I said I also agree.
I dont think theres a person in the world in the right mind of course that has any different opinion than you regarding Regrowth.